For the birds, scientists at work

Kathryn’s cousin, Amanda Holland, moved from researching condors in California, to buzzards in Georgia and South Carolina (for the University of Georgia, I think).

Here she is with one of her research subjects. Much lore is out there about handling carrion-eating birds for research — they vomit on you only if they like you, for example — but wholly apart from that, how great is this photo of a scientist at work?

I told her to copyright the photo (it is), and to hand on to the meme. Can’t you see a character in Game of Thrones, or some other fantasy, who carries her own vultures to clean up after she devastates some other army in battle?

Eagles and falcons and owls are okay, but what other bird could conceal the results of the battle, so the warrior princess could move on in stealth?

Science field work looks like great stuff. My experience is that it’s tiring, and sometimes lonely (though in very beautiful locations) — but the psychic rewards of actually increasing knowledge keep a lot of scientists going. There’s not a lot of money in it.

There’s not a lot of money in it, no, and you get filthy and exhausted and strung-out, and when the data aren’t coming in and you’re covered in arthropod bites and have been living in your car for two weeks and dining on tinned stew and peanut-butter sandwiches and have nothing to drink but warm brackish water, you really wonder why you do it, for minutes on end.

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